Welcome back to Uncle Ron's Porch, where Uncle Ron shares his expertise on growing a business through search engine optimization (SEO), technology, and social media. This week, Uncle Ron delves deep into the world of YouTube and its immense potential to elevate your business. Video content on YouTube can be an important part of an overall SEO strategy. Here’s a recap of what he discusses in the latest episodes.
YouTube: A Hub of Activity and Opportunities
YouTube stands out not just as a video-sharing platform but it is also one of the SEO secrets for small business growth. It also serves as an important way to interact with potential customers. As part of an overall SEO strategy, YouTube can allow you to get more eyes on your business content. It also serves as a platform where viewers can feel connected to you and your business.
YouTube is a place where people gather on various devices to consume video content. Whether they are viewing on their phone or desktop, active users are seeking information, solutions and entertainment. This is the reason why enhancing the user experience is key to success on a platform like YouTube.
Be mindful of how your video content looks on various devices. For example, YouTube shorts are best shot in vertical using a device such as your phone. They are most often viewed on mobile devices. On the other hand, long form YouTube videos look better when shot in the horizontal orientation using any variety of video filming devices.
Uncle Ron always emphasizes the dual nature of YouTube as both a search engine and a social media platform, which makes it extraordinarily beneficial for businesses to reach and understand their target audience.
Optimize for SEO: The Secret Sauce
In order to make the most out of YouTube SEO for your business, you need to understand a few basic things. The journey begins with an engaging video title that captures the viewer's attention. Try to think of an interesting way to state your title that draws people in and causes them to be curious. The video title is a powerful tool to reach a broader audience.
Additionally, tags and target keywords are equally important. These elements make your content detectable to search engines by using relevant keywords that people are searching for. There are many free and paid keyword research tools available on the market to help you to find the best primary keywords as well as long tail keywords for your content. Also, relevant tags are another way to describe your content. They not only help viewers to know what to expect, but they also can be found in search queries when someone is looking up a particular topic.
These few simple things will increase your click-through rate and boost your organic traffic. They are an important part of an overall YouTube SEO strategy. YouTube is just one way to grow your small business with SEO and social media.
The Power of Thumbnails, Captions, and Call to Actions
Creating a compelling and custom thumbnail is a fundamental step in capturing viewer interest. Uncle Ron advises against using randomly chosen frames from videos and suggests investing in visually appealing thumbnails instead. Individual videos should have their own unique thumbnail that draws the viewer in. Using relevant search terms in your video title and thumbnail will also help people to find your content when they go searching.
Platforms like Fiverr, Canva, and Adobe Spark can help in crafting these eye-catching thumbnail images. Well crafted video thumbnails are an important component of an overall YouTube SEO strategy.
In addition, captions (video descriptions) and calls to actions play a pivotal role in viewer engagement and conversion rates. Your video content is only helpful to your business if it grows your audience helps to convert viewers to paying customers. Video descriptions are an important component of YouTube SEO and using relevant keywords in the description will increase your search ranking. Uncle Ron highlights that captions should not only be present but also strategically implemented to keep viewers hooked. Tools like Descript can not only help you to edit your video content, but gives you AI generated YouTube video descriptions to make things easier.
Lastly, the calls to action should be placed throughout the video to ensure viewers don’t miss it. It should direct them to your desired outcome—be it subscribing to your channel, visiting your website, or making a purchase. Make links available in the video description for people to click on that take them to your desired location. Audience retention and viewer engagement are important components of people taking action. If your audience is bored with your video and clicks away after a few seconds, you won't have a chance to call them to action.
Quality Content: What Makes a Good YouTube Video
Great videos start with a strong hook—a statement or question that grabs attention within the first few seconds. As Uncle Ron explains, viewers on YouTube have short attention spans, so your content needs to be engaging and stimulating right from the start.
In addition, sound and video quality shouldn’t be overlooked. A good quality microphone and video recording device will ensure that you produce high-quality videos. When you are just getting started, your smartphone's camera will work just fine. The video quality produced by today's smart phones is better than what was used to film big movies back in the late 1990's. Just be sure that you are filming in 1080p or higher.
The content itself must be compelling, whether you’re telling a story, solving a problem, or providing entertainment. Uncle Ron shares an example from his personal life. He went to YouTube in order to learn how to build a bench for his outdoor seating area. The video was compelling and kept him engaged by explaining the process one step at a time. This highlights the platform's reliability and its capability to attract viewers searching for similar solutions.
Shorts and Social Interaction
YouTube's introduction of "shorts" offers a unique way to interact with your audience. Uncle Ron points out that these mini-videos serve as a teaser, prompting viewers to explore more of your content. The use of cliffhangers in shorts can effectively pull viewers into longer-form content, thereby increasing engagement and potential conversions.
Be sure to link your longer form video content to your shorts to keep your audience engaged with your content. Length of views as well as total views is important for your video SEO and can cause your videos to be pushed to the top of search algorithms.
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Additional Resources
To get the most out of these strategies, Uncle Ron encourages listeners to join his email list. Every Saturday morning, he sends out an email loaded with practical tips and a summary of the week’s podcast episodes. These emails often include a downloadable item to help you implement the discussed strategies effectively.
Join the email list to get the latest tips, tricks and cheat codes. The list is also a great way to stay connected and continuously grow your business using the gems Uncle Ron generously shares from his porch.
You can also explore the different options that Uncle Ron offers through Sprocket Expert Optimizations to grow your small business.
